Pictorial Philosophical Balpothi

Author(s): Bhuvanbhanusuri
Publisher: Divya Darshan Trust

Page 27

HOW MANY TYPES OF LIVING BEINGS ARE THERE?
There are two types of living beings-(1) Worldly and (2) free. Worldly beings are those wandering within four states, bonded with karma and imprisoned in a body. Free beings are those who have got rid of the world and they have neither karma nor body.
Worldly beings are of two types (1) Immovable and (2) movable. Immovable beings can't move by themselves; e.g. a tree.
Movable beings can move with their own will; e.g. ants, mosquitoes etc. Immovable beings have body with only one sense organ of touch; i.e. skin, whereas movable beings may have body with sense organs varying from two to five. To see which organ a being contain more than the other, we should look upwards from tongue to ears. Bisensual beings have skin and tongue (for touch & taste). Trisensual beings have extra nose (for smelling) apart from these two senses. Quadrisensual beings have eye apart from these three senses whereas pentasesuals have ear above all these. (a) Immovable monosensuals are of five types:
(1) Earthen body (sand, stone, metal, gems etc.)
(2) Aquatic body (water, ice, mist, dew etc.)
(3) Luminous body (Fire, electricity, illumination of lamp etc.)
(4) Gaseous body (Air, wind, fan, cool air of A.C. machines etc.)
(5) Botanical body (Trees, leaves, vegetables, fruits, flowers, algae, mildew etc.)
(b) Bisensuals: cowries, conch-shell, leech, earthworms, worms etc.
(c) Trisensuals: ant, bug, red ant, termite, maggot, insects etc.
(d) Quadrisensuals: black bees, mosquitoes, gnats, bees, grasshopper, scorpion etc.
(e) pentasensuals: naarak, tiryanch (animal beings), human, heavenly god.
A naarak (hell) means a place where one is destined to be tortured continuously by the demons, as he has accumulated so many sins.
There are three types of tiryanch: Aquatic, living on land, flying in the sky. Aquatic means those living in water i.e. fish, crocodile etc. Creatures moving on land are lizard, snake, wild animals like tiger, wolf etc; domestic animals like cow, dog etc. Creatures which can fly are birds like parrot, sparrow, peacock etc; bats etc.
Human means people like us.
Heavenly god is such a state, which one gets after accumulating plenty of punyakarma. This birth in God's land is full of means of comfort and is upper of this world.
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